Twisted heterotic/type I duality

TL;DR

This paper proposes a twisted duality between heterotic and type I string theories, relating the heterotic chiral string to a type I topological B-model on a Calabi-Yau five-fold, and verifies it through Lie algebra isomorphisms.

Contribution

It introduces a novel twisted duality framework and provides a non-trivial check by matching gauge transformation Lie algebras between the theories.

Findings

Lie algebras of gauge transformations are isomorphic

Matching structure constants involves one-loop corrections

Supports the proposed twisted duality

Abstract

We formulate a twisted version of the conjectured duality between heterotic and type I string theories. Our formulation relates the chiral part of the heterotic string with a type I topological B-model on a Calabi-Yau five-fold. We provide a non-trivial check of this duality by showing that certain infinite-dimensional Lie algebras of global gauge transformations built from each theory are isomorphic. Matching the structure constants of the Lie algebras involves a detailed analysis of one-loop corrections on the type I side.